Riba Cafe Restaurant, Stillorgan

There seems to be lots of new places popping up in suburban locations, and Riba in Stillorgan is another. It occupies what used to be ‘The Magic Chef’ chipper… which has been transformed into a cool, New York vibe eatery. We dined at Riba on Sunday night, its 4th day open. It was quiet on Sunday evening after what had been a busy weekend – however this did give us the opportunity to chat to the manager and staff and to sample of the wonderful food, the chef is serving up. Riba brings something different to Stillorgan and it was a more than enjoyable evening…one I can’t wait to repeat.

First things first, they have Prosecco on tap, at €5 per glass – that alone would bring me back to a place, but it’s helped here in Riba by having fantastic food to go with your prosecco. The wine list is good, reasonably concise with options at the various price points including by the glass. The white and red ‘on tap’ wine are Spanish.

We both decided to try the chicken wings to start, and they were delicious! There was plenty of them, lovely flavour and the right amount of sauce, with little sticks of celery and a blue cheese dip – that was my only complaint – the dip is served in little jars and the top of the jar just isn’t quite wide enough to properly dunk the wing!

Then we got a surprise course – smoked salmon and crab with toasted bread – to try. This was a beautiful dish, presented on a slate with gorgeous colours of the fish and beetroot – next time I’m having it as my starter.

For mains, I ordered a starter, the garlic, chilli and lime prawns which comes with a tomato focaccia bread to dip! My husband ordered the burger – which was a special on the day we were in. His burger came with chips and we ordered 2 sides, chips for me to go with my prawns and the Lyonnaise green beans. The chips… remember when I said this was the site of a chipper, well they have kept the chips part – cooked in beef dripping, they are pretty much to die for! No photo of burger, he ate it too quickly for me to snap one! The only small thing is that it would be nice to be able to order the burger less well done, it was really good quality beef and tasted great, but a little more ‘medium’ would have been even better! The prawns were juicy garlicy spicy deliciousness on a plate…

We drank 50cl of the house red ‘on tap’ wine with our dinner… and ordered a 2nd 50cl for dessert and then decided we did actually want something sweet so shared the peach cobbler which came in the cutest jar with creme anglaise in another little jar to pour over.

It was quiet the night we were there so its hard to comment on atmosphere. I can imagine when busier it would have a really nice ambience… I’m really looking forward to revisiting Riba…a lot of promise there!